A court in Italy is proceeding with preliminary hearings to consider evidence whether Captain Francesco Schettino will face trial for criminal charges for his involvement in the Costa Concordia disaster.
Schettino, labelled "Captain Calamity" in the press, appeared at the proceedings yesterday, faces a trial on charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship.
A newspaper in Italy is reporting that six and one-half years before the Costa Concordia disaster, another Costa cruise ship ruptured its hull during a "sail-by" maneuver off the coast of Capri.
Libero Quotidiano reports that in June 2005, the Costa Fortuna was sailing by the island of Capri off the western side of Italy.
.jpg)
I thought that I was experiencing deja vu while reading accounts that a cruise ship struck underwater rocks in a Norwegian fjord yesterday, resulting in damage to the ship’s hull.
The Marco Polo, operated by Cruise and Maritime Voyages, was sailing from Sortland, Norway, when the incident occurred.
A week ago we reported on a
The final score today: under-water rocks – 2; cruise ships – 0.
Cruise Critic reports that a Hurtigruten cruise ship ran aground and took on water in a Norwegian fjord north of the Arctic Circle. The 490 passenger Kong Harald had to wait for the tide to lift the cruise ship off a rock at
Newspapers in Europe are reporting on the contents of the legal submissions made by the Italian prosecutors who have been collecting evidence regarding the Costa Concordia disaster.
Sky News has an interesting video which you can watch here.
You can hear about 5 year old Dayana Arlotti who drown along with her father after
A commuter ferry slammed into a dock in lower Manhattan this morning during rush hour, injuring more than 50 people commuting into New York City. Newspapers report that at least two of the ferry passengers were critically injured.
CBS News states that the accident involved the Seastreak Wall Street. The New York Times states
Costa is back in the news with a widely reported incident where the Costa Pacifica cruise ship violently struck a piling in the Port of Marseille this morning. The cruise ship sustained a gash of around 8 meters long, which luckily is above the waterline.
Costa down-played the incident stating that the damage was just
A passenger aboard Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas video-taped the collision with the NCL Norwegian Star last week (September 14, 2012) in port in Bermuda. The NCL ship was hit by high winds (75 MPH) which caused the Star to break away from its mooring lines and strike the stern of the Royal Caribbean ship.
Yesterday I blogged about a near collision which allegedly occurred between Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas and a small Italian fishing boat, the Angela II, which is based in Civitavecchia.
You can read my article: Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas Nearly Runs Over Italian Fishing Boat. The article was based on
The popular cruise blog Noticias de Cruceros reports that yesterday the Liberty of the Seas cruise ship almost collided with a small Italian fishing vessel, the Angelo II based in Civitavecchia, in waters near the port city of Latium on the western coast of Italy.
According to Noticias de Cruceros, the Royal Caribbean cruise
A New York online newspaper in Manhattan, DNAinfo.com, reports that the Norwegian Star cruise ship collided with the U.S.S. Intrepid aircraft carrier this morning while the cruise ship was trying to dock at the harbor in Manhattan.
The aircraft carrier is part of the Intrepid Museum and is moored at the harbor.
Passengers on
Cruise Expert Professor Ross Klein has one of the most exhaustive and informative web sites for all of the things that go wrong on cruise ships.
This weekend I read this comment from a reader of his site about an encounter between a MSC container ship and a MSC cruise ship, the MSC Lirica.
CNN iReport contains a first hand account from a passenger describing a collision between Silversea Cruises’ Silver Shadow cruise ship and what is being described as a Vietnamese container ship near Halong bay, Vietnam. The report indicates damage to both the cruise ship and the container ship. The passenger’s account and a photograph of
Just two months after the Italian flagged Costa Concordia cruise ship struck rocks near the Italian island of Giglio, another Italian vessel has run aground off the coast of Sicily.
The 500 foot Gelso M ran aground in high winds and rough seas this morning, near the port town of Syracuse. The captain of the
Following the spectacle of the Costa Concordia disaster, the cruise industry is starting its campaign to convince the public that cruising is safe notwithstanding the terrifying and grotesque images of the stricken ship.
Pro-cruise trade organizations line the Cruise Line International Association ("CLIA") will claim that incidents like this are "rare" and will characterize the Costa Concordia
.jpg)
The Mercury News in San Jose California reports that four environmental groups filed a petition with the federal government today seeking to force cruise ships and other large vessels to slow down in waters between San Francisco and Los Angeles in order to reduce the chances of whale strikes.
A San Francisco environmental group, Pacific Environment
The U.S. Coast Guard has issued a press release indicating that it is investigating an allision between Holland America Lines’ cruise ship Westerdam and ice in the vicinity of Yakutat Bay today.
The Westerdam was reportedly maneuvering through ice near Hubbard Glacier Tuesday evening when it sustained damage approximately 15 feet below the cruise ship’s waterline. The
My Brazilian friend, Alexandre Gonçalves da Rocha, alerted me today to an accident which recently occurred at the port in Buenos Aires when the MSC Opera struck the dock.
Alexandre is a Brazilian who works as a maritime pilot at the port of Itajai since 1998 (no, he was not piloting this cruise ship!). He writes a great maritime blog
